OVERNIGHT. Music.

Out Of Tibet

Monks' Arts Fascinate, Entertain

September 03, 1993|By Dennis Polkow, Special to the Tribune.

Three cheers to Ravinia for theorizing that since the Dalai Lama would be in town for the Parliament of the World's Religions, the monks of Tibet's famed Drepung Loseling Monastery could be secured as part of its weeklong Musica Viva series, which happens to coincide with the parliament.

Like their spiritual leader, the monks have been living as refugees in northern India since the takeover of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, and regularly go out on the road to help preserve the ancient Tibetan Buddhist culture that currently can be celebrated only in exile.

Entering from the side of Ravinia's Bennett Hall stage Thursday night in ceremonial robes and headdresses, two of the monks assembled 12-foot-long Himalayan horns, which were then intoned to symbolize the earth down below with an ear-shatteringly low timbre that by comparison makes a Western tuba sound like a piccolo trumpet.

Soon, high trumpets representing heaven above joined in, with a pounding drum and clanging cymbals representing the harmony that should exist between them.

Tibetan monks are particularly renowned for their multiphonic chanting, i.e. a technique wherein each monk sings a thunderously low pedal point so resonant that it produces simultaneous and distinct overtones that in essence becomes a sung chord.

The Drepung Loseling monks offer a great variety of Tibetan arts, including a large emphasis on instrumental music and sacred dance.

Several dances were performed in silk costumes with rainbow tassels and colorfully decorated masks, including a sacred buffalo dance, a rainbow dance and a cemetery dance, wherein two of the monks raced around the stage in full skeleton costumes to show the meaning that death gives to life.

Though much of the night seemed to be a warmup for the monks, who after all don't really perform but actually are ritualizing as they practice these sacred arts, the evening was a fascinating and entertaining overview of a glorious ancient culture that is being kept alive by the willingness of such groups to take what were once secret, monastic rituals out on the road.

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The monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery will repeat "The Mystical Arts of Tibet" at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Field Museum and on Oct. 28 at the Park West.